


When I Said Hell on Earth (I Didn't Mean Like This)

by PyromanicSchizophrenic



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demons, Gen, Heaven & Hell, Shane's annoying but we love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 20:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18169568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyromanicSchizophrenic/pseuds/PyromanicSchizophrenic
Summary: Hell's a little overcrowded. Too many coming in, not enough coming out. Here's an idea: torture the soulsbeforethey die!Or, the demon!Ryan AU nobody asked for





	When I Said Hell on Earth (I Didn't Mean Like This)

**Author's Note:**

> This idea hit me like a freight train and wouldn't let me think about anything else.
> 
> Completely unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.

He's hated this assignment since before he got it. The very idea of this whole thing was one of the dumbest fucking things he's ever heard; after all, isn't the whole point of getting to live life in the first place that humans get to live their best lives and avoid Hell and torture in the first place? Sure, too many of them aren't doing that, but it feels like it's the principle of the matter. And at any rate, if there aren’t enough demons to torture the souls they already have, is the solution really to send some of your already sparse number of demons off to a different realm? He isn’t a businessman, although he has tortured his fair share of them, and he certainly isn’t “upper management,” so to speak, but it just seems like poor resource management.

And then there was the assignment itself. The human they'd given him was insufferable, scared of the most innocuous things. How was he supposed to use these fears for anything at all? It was a little easier to use frustration and anger to his advantage, but even then, the human was mostly mild mannered. It was like everything he did just rolled right off his back. Did humans not come with a healthy sense of fear anymore?

“Hey, Ryan.” Shane's greeting brings Ryan's thoughts back to the present. “I have a proposition for you.”

In Ryan's experience, those words never mean anything good. Especially not from Shane.

“Well, I guess technically the fans have a request,” Shane amends, sitting down beside his perceived friend. “Now, I know you hated the Sallie House.”

“Absolutely not.” Ryan's thankful for the image he built for himself early on, even if it did require him to seek out a “Vatican-certified exorcist” and ask him to weaponize a bottle of water. It allows him to refuse to return to Sallie's on no particular grounds at all.

“You haven’t even let me finish!” There’s a look in the human's eye that tells Ryan that Shane knows (thinks he knows) that Ryan knows exactly where it's going anyway. 

“You don’t start a sentence with ‘I know you hated Sallie House’ unless you're planning on following it up with, ‘but we should revisit Sallie House!’ I told you, I am never going back there.” Ryan's stance is final. They've only ever hit two locations that are actually demon domains, and the Sallie House was one of them. And, if Ryan's being completely honest with himself, Sallie frightens him. Just a little bit, nowhere near as much as Shane thinks and certainly not for the same reasons, but he's…wary of her all the same. She’s more powerful than he is, and far more angry. There’s a reason she’s tied to a house, and it's not some demonic reward system.

“Look, I've thought about this a lot,” Shane starts, and Ryan knows better than to think he can convince the human to drop it. “You're different now. Braver! You've grown! You survived a night in the Bellaire House, even!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Ryan holds up a hand. “I made it very clear. I am not attempting another night in the Sallie House again. I am not going back to the Sallie House at all.” The first time was bad enough. 

He can see the response, the  _ ‘well there aren’t actually any demons there,’’ _ form in Shane's head, but the human bites his tongue. Instead he says, “Yeah, but that was years ago. It's season seven, we gotta step it up.”

“Never doesnt end in a few years,” Ryan reminds him. “It uh, doesn’t end.”

“You have no imagination.”

Ryan stutters through something, unable to form words for a second. “Imagination? That's literally the definition of the word, what imagination?”

Shane just smiles at him. Honestly, sometimes Ryan thinks this whole “new torture system” thing is actually just bullshit that they fed him, and he’s actually being punished for some misstep. It certainly wouldn’t surprise him; trying to figure out what will get Shane Madej is more tortuous than anything Ryan's ever used. 

Sallie House was bad enough the first time, Shane stupidly antagonizing a demon by asking it to kill him, eviscerate him, everything ridiculous. Sallie didn't, because Shane was  _ Ryan's  _ human,  _ Ryan's  _ assignment. They can’t kill Shane because he isn't allowed to die until he’s been sufficiently tortured. Except the fucking dumbass keeps extending his sentence somehow, which is why Ryan's still here, pretending to look for “proof” of ghosts and demons while Shane’s pissing off the demons in charge of Ryan and getting Ryan in trouble for his fucking stunts. If they go back to Sallie's, Ryan can't be sure Shane will have the protection of a new program to fall back on; he's been in hot water more than a few times due to Shane's lack of “reform” or whatever they're looking for.

Or, maybe the higher-ups can tell that Ryan's been growing more and more hesitant to actively torture Shane. He actually, Satan help him, kind of likes the bastard.

* * *

It started with the decision to go to allegedly (and usually not really) haunted locations. The Winchester mansion hasn’t had a spirit inhabiting it since Mary died, since they were only haunting the woman and not the grounds itself. Doll Island never had anything weird about it at all, except a bizarre man with an even more bizarre hobby. And a whole army of spiders. Ryan had figured that was a good place to begin: all those lifeless eyes tended to creep out even the harshest of skeptics, and even someone with as steadfast a refusal to believe in the supernatural as Shane can’t deny that spiders are real and sometimes dangerous.

The Sallie House was an addition Ryan put into place on the grounds that Sallie would be able to convince Shane that weird things were happening, even if he didn’t admit to demons. Shake his beliefs just enough to spook him. Obviously, it didn’t quite work out that way.

It began at about the time Shane started shouting out, “Demon!” with the weird inflection on the back syllable, and Sallie appeared looking  _ livid. _

“I want you to know,” she said, seething where she stood as she played with the flashlight, “that if I had it my way, he’d be in millions of pieces so tiny that even  _ you _ would be proud.” Ryan’s never known where Sallie got her orders, who was in charge of her, but he imagines they must have warned her that they were coming and that they weren’t allowed to touch the humans--or Ryan, for that matter. “But only after I’d brutally murdered the rest of the humans that you’ve brought with you.” The other humans were being protected by some force even greater than Ryan’s dumb orders; they’re apparently good enough that it’s been decided they can be left alone. They must be left alone.

_ I’d like to kill him too, _ Ryan admitted silently, as he screamed at the flashlight. He had a reputation to build, as an annoying terrified human. 

It somehow got even worse when they got down to the basement (which had exactly nothing to do with Sallie’s presence) and Shane laid down in the center of the pentagram on the floor. It was in that exact moment that Ryan realized he was going to have to step it up. Someone that genuinely insane wasn’t going to be affected by any normal means, and especially not anything Ryan could come up with on the earthly plane without revealing himself.

Sallie had followed them downstairs and was looking at Shane like he was some kind of anomaly (he was). “He’s a special kind of stupid, isn’t he?” Ryan couldn’t agree more.

When they laid down for the lockdown, because Ryan had stupidly thought that Shane wouldn’t be comfortable sleeping in a place where there was allegedly a demon whether he believed in them or not, Sallie looked like she was barely restraining herself from shredding Shane’s skin. “Just a scratch or three,” she kept saying. “I won’t kill him unless you tell me I can. Maybe even more than three. Or maybe just one, really deep.” She traced a finger over Shane’s throat, hovering about a centimeter away from touching him. “All the way through. Oh, wait.” She giggled. “That would kill him.” She moves her finger so it’s over his shoulder. “This wouldn’t.” 

And suddenly, Ryan had an idea. He woke Shane up, making sure that he looked and sounded sufficiently terrified. Shane mumbled something, half asleep and clearly unhappy at being woken up. And Ryan kept it up, pretending that he couldnt sleep due to fear, waking up his companion throughout the night, always when he was just managing to get some sleep. All the while, Sallie kept up a running commentary on ways she'd like to kill Shane, ways she'd have liked to kill the crew while they'd been there, and it was making it hard for Ryan to keep up a facade of fear when all he really wanted to do was lash out at the other demon in the room. At almost three, Ryan decided that he'd set a new precedent--too afraid to last a few hours in a haunted house, but determined to keep trying. Plus, he took away Shane's opportunity to get a few more minutes of sleep so he could keep time. It was almost worth being completely silent for three minutes while Sallie ran her mouth.

Except. Except that Shane didn’t make Ryan feel stupid for being too scared to sleep in a house that Shane perceived and believed to be empty. There was no frustration at being constantly woken up. There had been, for a while, but once Shane saw how scared Ryan was (pretending to be), he calmed down and tried to talk Ryan down too. This assignment might have been turning out to be a little harder than Ryan had anticipated.

From there, waking Shane up during lock-ins became a constant, something that the viewers of the show made fun of Ryan for. It was always right when Shane was beginning to properly fall asleep for optimal annoyance, and it worked. As long as Ryan wasn’t so good at feigning terror that Shane  _ worried _ about him, Shane’s frustration was consistent and satisfying. Ryan’s personal favorite was Waverly, where he made a phone call and woke Shane up with a full conversation. Not to mention the ghost of the little boy, who moved the ball to warn Shane about his companion, a warning Shane wrote off as a coincidence and Ryan explained away as a response.

And then there was the Goatman and his stupid bridge, the only other real demonic location they’d actually visited. Ryan doesn’t know why the dumb goat didn’t retaliate against Shane; the rules surrounding the had human changed in the time since Sallie and allowed for mild retaliation that wouldn’t cause lasting harm. Again, the goal was to shake Shane’s belief just enough to spook him. The Goatman was uncooperative, for some reason, and somehow Shane ended up stealing the bridge from the demon.

That had gotten Ryan into trouble.

“We expected you to be almost finished by now.”

Ryan would have rolled his eyes if he had them in that form. “He’s remarkably stubborn, even for a human.”

“He stole Goatman’s Bridge!”

Ryan scoffed. “Humans haven’t got the authority to steal a demon’s bridge,” he pointed out. “He was all talk. He always is.” He wasn’t actually sure about that. Sometimes he wondered how invincible Shane perceived himself to be.

“But you do! And the moment you declared that you would add your name in, the bridge became yours. You’re supposed to be tormenting that human, not encouraging it!”

“Fine, I return the bridge to the fucking Goatman,” Ryan concedes. “But Shane did say it was only going to be ours if the goat remained silent. If he had just spelled out  _ something _ on the Ouija board, this wouldn’t have happened.” And it would have had to have been the other demon, or else the bridge still would have been transferred over to Ryan.

“Control your human. Or we’ll pass it over to someone who can.”

* * *

Ryan was returned back to earth filled with a sense of dread. Failure was not often forgiven, and if he wasn’t able to make any sort of progress with Shane then it would be considered a massive failure. The problem was, even with Ryan’s near constant presence, Shane’s list of sins never seemed to go down. It shifted and changed, but it was almost as if, the moment one could be considered atoned for, another took its place. It was frustrating and infuriating and exactly what made Ryan’s job so difficult. Not to mention how... _ uncontrollable _ Shane’s fervent disbelief made him. Nothing could touch him, so why should he have any respect or fear of anything? Shane genuinely, wholly believed that they were visiting empty buildings, nobody but them, the crew, and whatever guide they may have been provided with. Between those two factors, Ryan really was facing an impossible task.

Leave it to Shane Madej to figure out how to torture the demon he didn’t even know he had on his case, just by being himself.

“What if we don’t spend the night?”

Ryan looks up from where he’s scrolling through questions for the last post mortem of the true crime season. “What?”

“At the Sallie house,” Shane explains. “What if we don’t spend the night?”

“I’m pretty sure that spending the night wasn’t the only problem I expressed with the suggestion,” Ryan reminds him dryly.

“We didn’t have any of our cool toys last time,” Shane points out, ignoring Ryan’s protest. “Think of how much more ‘proof’ you could get with more than a shitty flashlight!” He’s clearly teasing Ryan with his use of the word proof, but he’d have a point if it weren’t for the fact that Ryan’s not actually looking to prove the existence of his own species.

Ryan thinks about it, about how badly Sallie wanted to kill Shane last time, and how much easier it’ll be for her to express that interest to Shane himself if they go in with a spirit box. It would definitely scare him, and Ryan wouldn’t be held responsible for revealing demons to the humans. But then he thinks about how much Sallie seems to resent him, even before they visited, and about how few reservations she probably has about revealing Ryan’s own identity. May as well throw them both under the bus. And even though Ryan still wouldn’t be able to be held responsible…

He doesn’t want Shane to know. Not even because it would fuck up the assignment or possibly still get him in trouble, but because Shane really has managed to grow on him. Ryan can’t imagine how Shane would react if he were to find out that his best friend was a demon that had been sent to torture him as some sort of new hell-avoidance initiative. He imagines it would be a harsh betrayal: to find out that he’d been lied to and strung along on so many pointless ventures; to find out that Ryan wasn’t scared, was never scared; to find out that so much of what Ryan had told him was a total lie. Even if there weren’t very many lies these days, he could be certain Shane wouldn’t readily believe that if he tried. If Sallie said anything, his hands would have been tied.

The worst thing about this whole thing is that none of that should bother him. It shouldn’t matter if Shane hated him, if Shane would let him explain, if Shane believed him, it  _ shouldn’t matter. _ But it  _ does _ . Ryan always meant for Shane to think of him as a friend, but Ryan never meant to make a friend for himself. Demons don’t have  _ friends _ , especially not human ones. And the certainly don’t have  _ best friends _ , friends they share (almost) everything with, friends that they trust with their lives, friends who want to spend all their time with them. Ryan had figured Shane would never want to see him outside of shoots and other random things Buzzfeed drags them into, but the bastard actually wants to hang out of his own volition. And Ryan values that friendship more than he ever thought he would.

Bringing Shane back into the Sallie House wouldn’t accomplish anything except shattering the illusion and probably getting the human killed. He won’t do that. He isn’t sure he can.

“It’s not like Winchester,” Ryan says, trying to change tracks. “Where we could wander for hours and never see anything. It’s a small house; the viewers have already seen all of it. There isn’t anything new to cover.”

“They don’t care!” Shane argues. “They’re asking us to go back, and I think it’d be cool!” He grins. “I had a lot of fun in that house.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

Shane gets a look in his eye, like he thinks he’s come up with something that’ll win him this argument.

“Would you rather go to a demon house that we’ve already been to, with no harm to our persons, or do you wanna do this season’s demon episode somewhere there may actually be a demon looking to rip out both of our hearts?”

_ I’d rather go to a house where the only demon is  _ me _ , _ Ryan thinks, but he can’t say that. That’s the whole problem. And this stupid image of an easily terrified, skittish human would absolutely rather go somewhere they’ve already been without any harm to their persons.

Even if Sallie didn’t hurt them solely because she’d been ordered not to.

* * *

In the end, it isn't Ryan's choice to make. He got called away almost immediately after Shane left, summoned back to the Hell plane, which he'd been steadfastly avoiding since the fallout from the Bridge Incident. There were more demons than Ryan was used to seeing at one time, all watching him critically. Ryan has always hated it there.

They told him that they wanted results, and Ryan hasn't been getting them. So Ryan was told that he was to bring Shane to the Sallie House, spirit box and motion lights and laser grid in tow, and he was to let Sallie do as she pleased. He was not to interfere.

He makes the decision to film the intro in their regular studio, under the guise of  _ the less time spent inside the house the better _ ; he ignores Shane as he points out that they're spending the night and it doesn't really matter. It does matter, because it gives Ryan time to come up with some kind of plan. Technically, he isn't allowed to stop Sallie, but if she tries to call him out and reveal his true nature to Shane, Ryan can at least have an explanation. A few prepared denials and just the right amount of terror to get the human to forget about whatever the box says and focus on the friend who's having a mental breakdown. Or, at the very least, Ryan can have a way to convince Shane to let him explain when his true identity is revealed anyway. God, this is going to be the worst night of Ryan's life--or what can be considered a life, anyway. 

“Well,” he says, when time's run out and he finds himself in front of the Sallie House once more. “Here it is. I swore I'd never return, and here we are anyway.”

“You came back anyway!” Shane says, like he's proud.

“I must be fucking insane,” Ryan mutters. Sallie is sitting on the front porch, a malicious grin on her face.

“The boys are back in town!” 

Ryan wishes he could share Shane's carefree attitude, wishes he could pretend he didn't know that everything was about to go so far south they'd end up on a different continent. But more than that, he wishes he could warn him. Warn him that the danger inside is real, that there is actually a demon in there that will not hesitate to hurt him this time, that this isn't just some game for the internet. If Shane dies tonight--a very real possibility, if Sallie's whispered, “I'm going to have so much fun with this one,” is any indication--it won't be for science, it won't be a grand discovery in the world of paranormal investigation. It will just be another human who made a few too many bad choices when it came to demonic interaction. 

And it will all be Ryan's fault. 

They start in the nursery, with the weird cult circle of stuffed animals. Ryan thinks about biting the bullet and powering up the spirit box in here, but he decides against it. Anything to prolong the inevitable. What he does decide to do is move the stuffed animals out of the circle, piling them up in the corner of the room. 

“Alright, if there's anything in there,” he begins, looking around the room as if he can't see Sallie in the doorway, “move the stuffed animals back.” They wait a moment. Sallie doesn't move, but she does watch the two of them.

“Bet you're angry we moved them,” Shane calls. “We ruined your circle. I'll bet that pisses you off!”

“Not really,” Sallie admits. She's making Ryan even more uneasy the longer she does nothing. Maybe that's the point. 

“If you're upset we moved the stuffed animals, throw one at me!”

“Jesus Christ, dude!” Ryan objects. Somehow, it's not as fake as usual. 

“Right at my head!” Shane continues. “It's pretty big, I'm sure you can hit it!” Nothing happens, but Sallie does move over to the pile. “Ryan, I think I said this last time, but this demon...it's not very formidable, is it?”

“He called me a wimp last time,” Sallie says. She kicks the stuffed bear that's on top of the pile off. Ryan screams. It seems in character. 

Shane laughs at him. “It just fell!” he says, placing a hand on Ryan's shoulder. “It just fell over, is all.” 

“Yeah, Ryan,” Sallie agrees. “It just fell.”

“Fuck you,” Ryan gasps. It’s directed at both of them. Shane laughs harder.

They set up a static cam to watch the room, to see if the bears move at some point during the night. Sallie pouts as they set it up, makes some comment about respecting privacy. Unlike last time, when Ryan replied to her telepathically, he isn't giving her the time of day. Maybe it's worse to ignore her; it'll only serve to piss her off and make the retribution that much harsher, but he wants her to think he isn't actually worried about tonight. He doesnt think that'll work out well, but it's the only thing left to make him feel in control of the situation, the way he's been in control of everything else up until this point.

They move on, into the living room. It’s where they’ll be spending the night, just like they tried last time. Ryan’s fairly certain they won’t make it through this time either, but not because he’ll “chicken out.” If Sallie’s waiting for anything before she makes her move, it’ll be for Shane to be asleep.

“This is, if you recall, where someone thought they saw Sallie,” Ryan says, pointing the flashlight at the couch. “She was sleeping right here, and there was a little girl in here with her.”

“This is also where you got to scared to go to sleep,” Shane reminds him, shining his flashlight on the floor. “Right there. Think you’ll make it this time?” 

Ryan sighs. “I don’t know.” Shane’s grinning at him. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” Shane agrees.

Ryan takes a deep breath as he pulls out the spirit box. “Alright, Sallie,” he calls, “if that is your real name. I’ve got this neat little box here, it’s gonna make it easier for you to talk to us.”

“You’re gonna hate it!” Shane adds gleefully. “It’s gonna make you wanna eat Ryan’s heart!”

“Why would you say that?”

Shane shrugs. “It is your box.”

“I’ve never eaten the heart of another demon before,” Sallie says helpfully, coming up behind Ryan. “I do wonder how it tastes.”

_ Do we even really have hearts? _

“We can always find out!”

He turns the box on, wincing at the initial burst of loud static. “Alright. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Ryan, that’s Shane. We were here once a long time ago. Can you say either of our names back to us.”

There’s a short break in the static, something that sounds like  _ no _ . Ryan lets out a nervous giggle. “I hate this.”

“Would you like to...uh, welcome us back to this house?” Shane asks. 

There’s another break in the static. Ryan’s blood turns to ice as he hears what he’s pretty sure is the word  _ liar. _

“What was that?” he asks nervously. Shane never picks up on the words, maybe he missed it, he probably missed it, he usually—

“It almost sounded like it said ‘liar.’”  _ Damn it _ .

“Who’s lying?” Ryan calls, knowing exactly where this is going but unable to halt it in its tracks. He’s got orders not to interfere with whatever Sallie’s doing, but worse than that, he still has his own illusion to keep up. It’s possible Sallie’s just baiting him into revealing himself, and he can’t let that happen either. 

The box says  _ you _ , but it’s so quick Shane will probably brush it off.

“Ryan, I really don’t think there’s a demon in this house,” Shane tells him.

_ There are two _ .

Shane looks down at the box in Ryan’s hands, as Ryan stays frozen where he stands. “I can explain,” Shane says, with a grin.

“Oh, can you?” Ryan asks, and he can’t actually pinpoint why he’s so scared of Shane finding out except that he is terrified of that possibility, terrified that he might lose the first real friend he’s ever had.

And, in the end, that’s what all of this is about. Ryan didn’t come to earth expecting to care about any of the humans he was to surround himself with. Not with Shane, not with the crew, not with the other people who work at Buzzfeed that Ryan never actually  _ needed _ to spend time with but he did anyway. Once this ends, once Shane is saved (or, more likely, killed), Ryan goes back to Hell. He goes back to what he did before, torturing the too many souls until their sentence is up and they move onward. He leaves all of those dumb human friends he’s stupidly made behind. He hasn’t failed this assignment because he hasn’t made any real progress with Shane, he’s failed because he made very real connections with him and the others.

“Ryan?”

Ryan blinks, comes back to himself. He turns off the spirit box and shakes his head. “Lost in my head, sorry.”

“I thought you’d been possessed!” Shane isn’t serious, Ryan can tell that from the look in his eyes, but it still hits a nerve. Ryan can’t be possessed. He does the possessing.

“I’m pretty sure if I’d been possessed by a demon, I would kill you immediately,” he says, trying to brush it off.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Shane concedes. “I was getting worried about you for a second there, though.”

“I fucking hate this house.”

They make their way through the other so-called hotspots of the house, setting up the laser grid and some motion sensor lights in different areas. Sallie avoids all of them. With the exception of knocking down one of the bears (and even the human Ryan pretends to be would have to admit that that doesn’t exactly count as evidence) and the spirit box, which Shane never takes as compelling, Sallie hasn’t done anything at all. It makes Ryan more and more uneasy the longer the night goes on. 

Finally, they make it down to the basement. The most fitting place in the narrative for a climax, for Sallie to make her move, even if the two things are entirely unrelated.

“Don’t zone out this time,” Shane warns, as Ryan takes the spirit box out again. 

“This is a uh, a bad place to zone out, I think,” Ryan admits. It is, but not in the way Shane takes it to mean. He turns the box on. “In case you didn’t hear us upstairs, I’m Ryan.”

“I’m Shane! You probably remember us from last time, though. I like to think we were memorable.” The box says  _ you were _ , but it’s so quick that even Ryan barely catches it.

“Can you say either of our names back to us?” Ryan calls out. Sallie gives him the most terrifying grin that Ryan’s ever seen before the box says _ Ryan...is lying...to you _

“I think I might have heard ‘Ryan,’” Shane admits. “I mean, I don’t mean to freak you out, but it almost sounded like it said ‘Ryan is dying tonight.’”

Ryan thinks that would actually be preferable.

“Oh God,” he says instead, affecting the wide eyes and terror filled voice.

“To be fair,” Shane backpedals, probably trying to make Ryan feel better, “it didn’t kill me last time. So you’re probably safe.” It just makes Ryan feel worse. Guiltier. Shane doesn’t deserve this. He’s starting to realize that, Shane doesn’t deserve any of this.

The box says,  _ try again _ , but Shane doesn’t seem to be paying attention to it. He’s focused on making sure Ryan doesn’t have a full mental breakdown. Ryan takes a deep breath and asks, “What was that?”

_ He is...lying...to you. _

The only word in all of that which comes through perfectly clear is ‘lying,’ but Ryan’s pretty sure that it’d be easy to figure out what Sallie’s trying to say if Shane only connected the pieces. He really hopes that the human doesn’t bother to try.

“I heard lying, again,” Shane says. “Your box seems to be trying to tell you that all of this is bullshit.”

“He can’t be serious,” Sallie huffs, leaning against the wall. Manipulating the box is actually a lot harder than ghost hunters seem to think; Ryan knows that from experience. He had originally planned on half-assing chatter in places that weren’t actually haunted, but he quickly learned that he didn’t have to. He could just barely make words come through even when he was genuinely trying.

_ Oh, no, he absolutely is, _ Ryan assures her. A quick-lived wave of relief rushes through him as he powers down the box. If, and it’s a big  _ if _ \--if they can make it through the night, if Sallie is still under orders not to harm Shane, if they can just get to sunrise, then Ryan doesn’t have to lose anything at all. The odds aren’t great, and the relief is gone as quickly as it’s there, replaced by the heavy dread that’s been settled in Ryan’s gut since they arrived.

As they’re going back upstairs, Sallie reaches up and tugs on Shane’s shirt. The human turns around.

“What?” Ryan asks him, even though he already knows.

“I think my shirt got caught on something.”

“Or it was the demon,” Ryan offers.

“Yeah, okay,” Shane says. “The terrifying demon child tugged on my shirt. Sure.”

Sallie doesn’t follow them the rest of the way up, and there is nothing worse to Ryan than not knowing where she is at any given moment that they’re in here. They set up the camera and the sleeping bags, and Ryan does still have a water gun, but the water isn’t blessed. He figured the  _ don’t interfere _ order included not shooting holy water at the other demon. They lay down for the night, under the guise of sleeping (Ryan doesn’t sleep, and he has no intentions of letting Shane drift off for more than five minutes, either).

“Fuck, why’d I agree to do this again?” Ryan asks himself aloud, as if he had any kind of choice in the matter. “I mean, I must be fucking insane.”

“Yup,” Shane agrees sleepily, mumbling into his pillow.

Ryan thinks it’s about an hour in that it happens. Sallie reappears, grinning cruelly in a way that Ryan’s not sure even he could pull off, in any form. “Remember your orders,” she tells him, a horrible twist on Ryan’s only fallback from the last time. 

_ Please don’t do this.  _ He never thought he’d find himself begging for anything, and certainly not for a human’s life.

“Do what?” The grin grows even bigger. It looks monstrous, now. “I have orders, too, or had you assumed I didn’t?” She sits down on Shane’s chest, causing him to shift in discomfort.

“Ryan,” he says sleepily, not panicked yet because he doesn’t realize he needs to be, only annoyed because he thinks Ryan’s the one doing this. “Ryan, come on.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Ryan admits, not taking his eyes off of Sallie. Shane starts breathing harder, and Ryan  _ knows _ that trick. He’s used it hundreds,  _ thousands _ of times before. It’s always been one of his favorites: literally stealing air from a human’s lungs. Deflating them until they collapse. Human souls behave exactly as their physical bodies do, except that when a soul is “killed” or “destroyed,” it causes a reset. The soul reappears, exactly as new. But the human retains memories and recalls the sensation. Shane is not a detached soul. Shane is still alive, still in a physical body. If his lungs collapse he  _ dies. _

“Ryan, I can’t…” Shane’s gasping, any air he takes in gone before it can have any effect. “I...I don’t…”

Ryan scrambles to his feet. “ _ ENOUGH!”  _ It’s said in his true voice, guttural and otherworldly and terrifying, not that he can be assed enough to care.

A flash of hellfire surrounds him, filling up the whole room but somehow avoiding the space Shane occupies. Sallie watches him in shock as a jet of the fire shoots out at her and slams into her, knocking her to the other side of the room. “You defied orders,” she whispers.

“What the fuck,” Shane asks, staring up at Ryan. Ryan isn’t looking at him.

“You defied orders,” Sallie repeats, staggering to her feet as the flames flicker out. “Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you for this?”

“Ryan?” There’s shock beginning to settle in Shane’s voice. Ryan’s still avoiding looking at him. “Ryan, are you--”

“Run,” Ryan tells him. It’s all he can do, now. Something’s going to happen next, not that Ryan knows what it is. It’s best that Shane escapes now, while he still can. Thankfully, whatever it is the human sees in front of him is enough “proof” to spur him into action. Shane grabs the water gun that he thinks is full of holy water and runs. Ryan doesn’t let Sallie chase after him.

“They’re going to destroy you for this,” Sallie says gleefully, climbing to her feet. “You interfered! You revealed yourself! You’ve done  _ everything  _ wrong!”

“If they really didn’t want me to turn into a sympathiser, they wouldn’t have sent me to be surrounded by humans,” Ryan tells her. “I don’t care what happens to me, but I will fight, and I will defy orders, and I will do anything it takes to keep him alive. And you can tell them that, from me, because I’m not going back.”

He turns to leave, and he’s almost out the door when Sallie calls after him, “You won’t necessarily have a choice!”

* * *

Ryan finds Shane half a mile away, collapsed near a park bench and clutching onto the plastic water gun like his life depends on it. To be fair, he probably thinks it does.

“Shane?” Ryan calls gently, hanging a few feet back. He's not exactly proficient in what to do when your human friend finds out you're a demon, considering it's hardly something they make pamphlets for, but he's reasonably certain it begins with not getting too close.

Shane stands up quickly, aiming the water gun at Ryan's face with shaking hands. Ryan wishes he could erase the fear in his friend's eyes, the sheer terror in the way he looks at him. He wishes he could have avoided this whole mess. He wishes he'd been brave enough to directly disobey orders earlier. This is all his fault. 

Ryan holds his hands up in a show of surrender, intentionally holding himself completely still. He still finds himself with a jet of lukewarm water in his face.

Shane relaxes slightly, lowering the water gun. “Are you...not possessed, anymore?”

And there it is. Shane's giving him an out, an explanation that leads to everyone almost happy and everything almost the same. Sure, the show has to end because Shane believes in demons now, and presumably ghosts aren’t going to be far behind. But Ryan can pretend to be a human again, the facade isn’t ruined. Shane is handing him an alternative that will patch this entire thing over.

Ryan doesn’t know if he can do that.

“I…” Ryan takes a deep breath. “I was never possessed, Shane.” Before he can ready himself to explain further, Shane lifts the water gun back up and shoots him in the face again. “Yeah, the water’s not blessed.”

Shane drops the water gun. It clatters on the sidewalk. “How long?” He sounds absolutely wrecked. His entire worldview is changing, and he’s probably only moments away from falling apart. “How  _ fucking _ long?” Shane asks again, and Ryan doesn’t know how to respond.

“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” he settles on, trying to buy himself more time.

“Bullshit!” Shane shouts, and Ryan quickly shushes him, looking around to make sure none of the residents heard. “How long have you--have you been-- _ fuck _ , Ryan!” He collapses back onto the ground, head in his hands. After a moment, in a small, devastated voice, Ryan hears a very quiet, “Why?”

Ryan sits down on the ground, but doesn’t move any closer. He’s pretty sure Shane wouldn’t react well to a lesser distance between the two of them right now. “I’m not actually sure,” he admits gently. “I mean...It’s not like I’m free to do whatever I want, okay? I was told to come here. To you. They never really explained why.” Ryan thinks for a moment, really thinks, about how much he wants to give away. If he says too much, he’ll be in even deeper trouble than he already is. But Shane deserves to know the truth, because there might be another demon tacked onto his case after they take Ryan away, or they might even just give up and kill him. Shane should be prepared. “Why it was you.”

Shane looks up at him, then, eyes full of fear and betrayal and  _ loss _ , as he asks his next question. “Why’d you come after me?”

Ryan blinks. He’d expected to be prompted to continue on his explanation for this whole dumb initiative, the stupid fucking orders that led him here in the first place. Not…Not that.

“I was worried about you.” He knows even as he says it that Shane won’t believe him. “Look, how about…How about I explain everything. From the start. Okay?”

Shane hesitates a moment, but nods. “Just know that I don’t believe a single fucking thing you say.”

“That’s…Yeah, that’s fair.” At least he’s letting him explain at all. “Alright, so. Basically, Hell isn’t actually forever. It’s like a prison sentence, you’re there for a certain amount of time based on whatever wrongdoings you’ve committed here on Earth. Once your time’s up, you move onward to Heaven, or Paradise, or the Good Place, whatever you wanna call it. Which is great, except people are getting worse. More callous. More intentionally hurtful. It was explained to me that there were…There were too many people in Hell. They’ve been coming in faster than they’ve been going out. So they wanted to try something new.

“Think of it as, like, a new initiative. The idea was that if we can…” Ryan struggles for a way to say this part without saying the word ‘torture.’ “If we can make it so that some humans serve that sentence  _ before _ they die, they’ll skip Hell altogether. Since they already kind of experienced it, I guess. And so they sent me to you.”

Shane lets out a humorless laugh. “What the fuck did I do to deserve a fucking demon on my ass for five years?”

Ryan’s mind comes to a screeching halt. Because the thing is, that hadn’t really occurred to him. He’d questioned a lot of stuff about this assignment, but he’d never questioned the list of Shane’s sins (except for the fact that it never seemed to end). But now, even as he looks at the list he can still, in a sense, see when he looks at the human, nothing on it seems worth five years.  _ We expected you to be almost finished by now. _ Not even completely finished, just almost. But even if Shane’s list had been going down, getting shorter, Ryan doesn’t think that anything on the initial list was worth five years, and he’s not actually sure that the list as a whole tallied up that far, either. Shane’s a prick, sure, but he’s not…He’s not a bad person.

“Maybe…Maybe I was just really bad at my job,” Ryan offers finally, even though he knows that’s not true. He’s always been considered one of the best. Sure, he’s been out of his element this whole time, forced to get creative in lieu of his usual methods, but that shouldn’t have been enough to forestall the whole assignment. “Or maybe I just wasn’t trying.”

He feels a familiar sensation in his chest then, the summons he’s been anticipating but also hoping wouldn’t come. He knew that he’d have to go eventually, if he didn’t answer the call that he’d be dragged down anyway, but Ryan can’t leave. Not yet.

“Listen,” he says, and it’s not the gentle  _ let me explain _ he’s been using for this whole conversation. Shane looks at him, still tense and uneasy and terrified. “They’re calling me back. I shouldn’t have done anything that I did back there. They told me that I had to let Sallie do whatever she wanted, that I wasn’t allowed to interfere, and I disobeyed them. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but I do know they probably won’t let me come back. Even worse, I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. But I’m sorry, I don’t think you’ll just be left alone. Holy water works no matter what, but religious iconography only works if it’s for a religion you believe in and practice. We aren’t always stopped by sacred ground and there’s no one clear way to identify one of us from one of you. I know it looks really bad, I know that it looks like there’s no way you’ll get out of this, but you know about us now and you’re not an idiot. You’ll figure something out.” The tug in Ryan’s chest is growing stronger. He’s about to be taken away, he knows he is. “I know that I’ve said a lot of things that aren’t entirely true, I know I’ve lied and kept a lot of secrets, and I know you don’t trust anything I say right now, but Shane. You really are my best friend. I could not stand by and let Sallie kill you.”

Whatever Shane’s response is, it gets lost in the  _ whoosh _ ing of the hellfire that rips Ryan away from Earth.

Except. Except Ryan’s not the only one they took away with them, and they’re not on the Hell plane. Not fully.

“Oh, God,” Shane says breathlessly, and Ryan can’t blame him. There are hundreds, if not  _ thousands _ of demons surrounding them, watching them like they’re on display in a zoo. Even Ryan is suitably cowed, and he’s one of them. He can’t imagine what this must be like for Shane, the human who only just found out demons even exist less than an hour ago.

It takes Ryan a moment, worried as he is about Shane, to realize that all the demons are whispering and muttering amongst each other.  _ It worked _ and  _ incredible _ and  _ unbelievable _ , floating around and surrounding him until uneasy confusion makes way for an almost fearful sense of total cluelessness. All the while, Shane spins around wildly, like he’s trying to avoid having his back to any one of them for too long.

“What’s going on?” Ryan calls at last, and the whispering stops. He notices he still looks like a human. Usually, when they call him back, he shifts back to his true form. He thinks the only reason it’s even possible for him to hold the illusion is that they’re on some strange in-between plane, somewhere in the middle of hell and earth. “Why’d you bring him?”

Someone calls Ryan by his true name. Shane lets out a frightened whimper as the rush of power forces Ryan’s eyes to change. He doesn’t know what the human sees right now; he’s afraid to find out. “ _ We presumed you would prefer not to be separated from your pet. _ ”

A million things race through Ryan’s mind. Shane isn’t a pet, and Ryan wants him to be left alone, even if that means that he never gets to see him again. This is too far, there’s a reason humans are never brought off the earth plane before they die. This is too dangerous, what if they can’t put Shane back?  _ What if that’s the point? _

“ _ We presumed the human would like an explanation. _ ”

“ _ We presumed the human would like a say in what happens next. _ ”

Shane freezes in place, stunned into stillness by the voices surrounding them. He looks like he wants to say something, but seems to think better of it. Ryan’s glad; he’s pretty sure that his superiors (because they’ve all got to be more powerful than he is) wouldn’t appreciate a human trying to talk to them directly, despite what they’re saying.

Ryan takes a steadying breath, that he doesn’t even really need, before demanding, “Then explain.” He’s already broken enough rules, may as well break a few more.

They speak Ryan’s true name again. “ _ This assignment has changed you _ … _ You are different than you were before…Sympathetic…Not just to your human, but to all others…You cannot be sent back to where you were before this all began…It would not suit you anymore… _ ”

“What does that mean?” Ryan asks. “What does any of this have to do with Shane?”

“ _ Admittedly, nothing _ .” Ryan feels his blood begin to boil at the thought that Shane was apparently chosen at random for whatever cryptic bullshit they were trying to get at. “ _ He simply contained the most potential for what we were looking for. _ ”

“Which was?”

“ _ You always were our greatest pride…But you were growing uncontrollable…Even we had to admit that you were becoming dangerous…So we began to wonder…Is it possible to reform a demon… _ ”

A whole lot of things click into place at that. None of this made sense in the beginning; there were too many souls for the demons to be able to torture them efficiently, so they chose to send demons away to earth to lessen the number of souls coming in. Why Ryan never once encountered another demon on a similar assignment with a different human, why there were specific orders in the very beginning that no other demon could harm Shane and why those orders changed towards the end. Why there was never anything that stood out to Ryan as particularly  _ bad _ about Shane; he was hardly a saint, but he wasn’t a bad enough person to warrant all of this.

It even explained why Shane’s list of sins always seemed to stay stagnant.

Because it was never meant to go down.

“So when you said ‘new reform initiative,’” Ryan begins, trailing off.

“ _ We were reforming you…” _

“Cool.” Ryan nods, looking around him at all the demons gathered, watching him like he’s some  _ fucking science experiment _ , trying to reign in his fury so that he doesn’t end up getting Shane hurt in the crossfire. Wouldn’t that just be fucking fantastic, going through all of this only to kill him at the end? “Great. So if I can’t go back to what I was doing before, what the fuck am I supposed to do next?”

“ _ We will leave that up to your human…” _

All eyes turn to Shane, who’s looking at all of them with wide eyes. He doesn’t seem to know what he’s being asked to decide, like he doesn’t fully understand the situation. In his defense, it is a weird position for him to find himself in.

“Shane?” Ryan prods gently. “Hey. Eyes on me. Ignore all of them.” The human turns to look at him, but quickly closes his eyes, as if that doesn’t help, either. Ryan focuses on changing his appearance back to the one Shane’s used to, dark eyes that don’t look empty and teeth that aren’t pointed. Like a human. “They can make you forget about all of this. We can send you back to LA and you can go back to your annoying, skeptical self.”

Shane shakes his head, opening his eyes back up. “And go right back to antagonizing them? They’re real, they can kill me. Oh, God, one almost killed me, I can’t--”

“Hey, hey, no, hey.” Ryan hesitates before placing his hands on either of Shane’s shoulders. Shane doesn’t shake him off; he takes it as progress. “They’re not going to kill you, okay.  _ I _ will not let them touch you.” There’s a hint of a threat in his voice as he says it, and he notices with no small amount of satisfaction that the other demons surrounding them look taken aback. “But they’re leaving everything up to you. You go back to LA, but you can choose if you remember what happened tonight. You get to choose if you remember me.”  _ You choose if I get to come with you. _

Shane takes a few steadying breaths before looking up at the crowd of demons around them. “I want to remember,” he states. “And I want Ryan to come with me.”

“ _ As he is _ ?”

Shane glances sideways at him. “I wouldn’t have him any other way.”

Ryan thinks he might cry out of relief.

* * *

Shane remains skittish in the days following The Incident™. Ryan wants to do something, wants to assure him of something, but he figures that the best thing to do right now would probably just be to give him space. He has suspicions that Shane might have confided in Sara, which he should probably technically have done something about, but it’s not like Shane was officially told he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Besides, having someone to talk to about the whole  _ my best friend’s a demon _ thing who isn’t that demonic best friend is probably beneficial in the long run, so. Ryan leaves it be.

They do, however, need to meet up sooner or later to talk about the future of Unsolved: Supernatural. Obviously, none of this has any effect on True Crime, but Supernatural is pretty up in the air. There is always an option for Shane to pretend that he still doesn’t believe in all of this--ghosts tend to be unable to harm humans, and it’s usually a safe bet that they’ll be afraid to try anything with Ryan around anyway, and Ryan can keep choosing locations that definitely aren’t demon infested, so the illusion won’t be hard to keep up. But Ryan won’t assume what Shane wants in all of this. It isn’t his place to decide.

Shane shows up at Ryan’s apartment exactly twelve days after The Incident™ with a cup of coffee and a list of questions, right before Ryan’s about to text him to ask him to meet up (in public, because he wasn’t sure if Shane was ready to be alone in any capacity with a confirmed demon yet). He still looks a bit uneasy, but much less so than he did when almost two weeks ago. There’s more curiosity than fear in his eyes, this time, which Ryan supposes he can’t really fault him for. He’d have a lot of questions, too.

“So how many ghosts and demons have I actually pissed off?” Shane asks, once Ryan closes the door behind him. Ryan blinks. He hadn’t expected Shane to start with that one.

“Counting me? Three demons and a couple dozen ghosts, probably.”

“A couple  _ dozen _ ?” Shane repeats. “Really?”

Ryan shrugs. “I dunno, really.”

“What, you can’t see them?” Shane sits down on Ryan’s couch, looking up at him attentively. Ryan doesn’t know why he wasn’t expecting this; Shane’s always explained that the reason he’s a skeptic ( _ was _ a skeptic) was because there was no science to back it up. Now that Shane has empirical proof, it stands to reason that he’d want to get as much information as possible.

“Well, they hide,” Ryan points out. “Run from the room. I tend to only catch glimpses of them. Occasionally they’d try and warn you, and they got frustrated if it didn’t work.”

Shane, strangely, looks almost gleeful. “Warn me! Like when?”

“Waverly,” Ryan supplies readily. It’s the closest any of them had gotten. “And I think, somewhere else, one of them tried to tug on your shirt to pull you away, maybe? But for the most part, I think that uh, they were more concerned with getting themselves away from the demon than they were with helping the poor human it had latched onto, you know?” It’s weird, being able to say that out loud. Shane tenses a little at the phrasing, but he seems determined to keep going.

“We’ve visited more than three demonic locations, though,” Shane says. “Or, two, I guess, you said you were counting yourself.”

Ryan nods, sitting down on the other side of the couch. “The thing about the series is that I got to choose locations based on conjecture and rumors. So we could go to places like Bobby Mackey’s and the Bellaire house, which are rumored to be demon infested but aren’t actually. I brought you to…to the Sallie House the first time because I thought she might do something that…wouldn’t necessarily make you believe in demons, but it would make you at least a little less certain that we didn’t exist.” He looks down at his lap. “That didn’t really work very well though, and I realized it was uh, probably best if I kept you away from other demons for a while.”

“So were there ghosts at Bobby Mackey’s, or was it just empty?”

“I mean there are ghosts almost everywhere,” Ryan explains. “If the question is ‘are there ghosts here?’ then the answer is probably ‘yes.’”

Shane looks around. “Are there...any here?”

“No. I think there was a girl who died in the nineties here, when I first moved in, but she uh, she didn’t like sharing her space with me very much.”

“Are there ghosts in  _ my _ apartment?”

“I think you annoyed them away, honestly.”

Shane grins. “I love that!” He looks down at his phone, where Ryan realizes he’s typed up a list of things he wants to ask. “Is the Goatman real?”

Ryan groans. “Oh my fucking God, don’t get me started on the fucking Goatman.”

“How can you say that?”

“What?”

“‘Oh my God,’” Shane elaborates. “And like, you say ‘Jesus Christ’ a lot, too. I thought demons couldn’t stand the name of God.”

Ryan would rather talk about the Goatman. “So, okay. If a Catholic suspects that they’re being tailed by a demon. They can invoke the name of God, and it’ll...it won’t do any real damage, but it’ll stop that demon in its tracks for a minute. That Catholic can use crucifixes, rosaries, religious medallions, whatever to harm the demon. I can’t follow a Catholic into a church, if that Catholic knows what I am and is deliberately attempting to protect themself from me. But I, as an individual, can walk onto any holy ground of any denomination, I can use whatever name of whatever religious figure, I can touch any religious iconography. An atheist is incredibly fucked.”

“Who’s right?”

“Nobody. Everybody. Depends on how you look at it. There isn’t a single religion that has everything absolutely right, and I don’t think most religions understand that there isn’t a list of deeds that damn you to eternity. Very few people are damned for eternity. Most are damned for like, maybe like, a few years.” Ryan was never good at keeping track, either of time or of the souls placed in front of them, so he couldn’t say for sure how long any of them were there for. “I said before, it’s like a prison sentence. Think about how bad you’d have to be to be sentenced for literally forever.”

“Is Trump going to be there forever?”

Ryan laughs. “Trump has a waiting list of demons who wanna fuck with him. It’ll take forever for all of them to get their chance.”

Shane nods. “I think I’m okay with that.” He looks down, but he doesn’t seem to be reading any of the questions on his phone. “How long am I slated for?”

“I think you might be in the clear, actually,” Ryan admits, before tacking on, “So long as you don’t like, kill anybody or anything really bad. The thing is, it isn’t demons who decide the sentences. I don’t know anything about the ones that do. But they aren’t exceptionally cruel, or anything. You went through a lot, even without counting what happened a couple weeks ago. Five years is a long time to be tethered to a demon, especially when you didn’t want to be or even know that you were. I’d imagine they’re sort of...counting that, as your sentence. Which is what  _ I _ was told was happening, anyway.”

There’s a heavy silence that stretches on for minutes. Ryan’s afraid to break it.

“So you didn’t answer the question about the Goatman.”

Ryan sighs. “Yes, he’s real; he’s the other demon you pissed off; and yes, you did steal his bridge, which got me in trouble and I had to give it back.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because I refused to be punished because  _ you _ did something fucking stupid.” Ryan thinks about it. “And it might actually kind of still be yours, I think. All our viewers think it is, or at least they say it is, and I think it detracts from the amount of power Goatman draws from his ownership. This kind of thing’s really complicated.”

“I’ll accept ‘kind of’ my bridge,” Shane concedes. 

“But, anyway, after that whole mess, I just. I decided no more real demons. Ever. Except, I was told, I wasn’t allowed to do that. They wanted me to bring you back to the Sallie House and I wasn’t allowed to do anything to stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I do appreciate it. That you did stop her.” The tenseness returns, and Shane’s avoiding looking at Ryan. He thinks maybe he should have left that subject untouched until Shane brought it up himself. “I’m not sure what I thought it was at first,” he admits softly. “There was this weight on my chest, I just. I thought you were, like, trying to wake me up or something. And then I couldn’t move, and I just thought, ‘sleep paralysis?’ And then I couldn’t breathe and I started to realize that there might actually be a fucking demon in that house, and I pissed it off.” He takes a shaky breath. “And then I heard the most terrifying voice I’d ever heard, and my blood turned to ice. And I looked up and saw you, two feet taller than usual, with literal fire in your eyes and actual horns, and the whole room was on fire. I thought I was going to die. I thought you were going to be the one to kill me. And then you told me to run.”

Ryan doesn’t mention that he wanted to tear apart every single demon that was there on that in-between plane with them after he found out that Shane wasn’t chosen for any particular reason. He doesn’t mention that he still wants to destroy Sallie, and her house, and everything associated with her. He doubts that would do anything good. What he does mention, though, is, “You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had. You opened the door for me to realize that I could  _ have _ friends, that I could actually care about people. And in that moment, I realized: I  _ could not  _ let you die. Even if it meant you were afraid of me for the rest of your life, you would still be alive. And that’s all that mattered. It’s all that  _ does  _ matter.”

Shane looks up at him with a shaky smile. “You’re my best friend, too,” he says finally. “Even if you are a big, scary demon, and not a tiny, terrified human.” He looks back down at his phone, probably still has other questions, but instead asks, “So what’s this mean for the show?”

Ryan laughs. “I wanted to ask you about that, actually. But I guess, it is up to you.”

“Still don’t know about aliens,” Shane points out. “Don’t know what happened with those people who danced to death in France. And we still haven’t gotten any kind of proof, anyway. I don’t think anybody grabbed the cameras that night, and I doubt you want to reveal yourself to the world.”

“Oh, shit, we’re gonna have to replace all of that, aren’t we?”

“Well, if we’re gonna keep doing the show, we do.”

And somehow, everything might actually be okay. Maybe even…almost normal.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hi, tell me what you thought!


End file.
